Lawyer: Former Marine held in Iran secretly retried

Apr. 12, 2014
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Amir Hekmati / Family photo via AP

by Donna Leinwand Leger, USA TODAY

by Donna Leinwand Leger, USA TODAY

A former U.S. Marine previously sentenced to death in Iran on espionage charges has been secretly retried, convicted of collaborating with the U.S. government and sentenced to 10 years in prison, The New York Times reported on Friday.

Amir Hekmati, an Iranian American held in Iran since 2011, was not told by Iranian officials about the trial, held in December, the conviction for "practical collaboration with the American government" or a new sentence, his laywer, Mahmoud Alizadeh Tabatabaei, told the Times in interviews this week at his office in Tehran.

Hekmati, born in Flagstaff, Ariz., and raised in Flint, Mich., served in the Marine Corps from 2001 to 2005, and worked as an infantryman and a language and cultural adviser in Arabic and Farsi. Hekmati traveled to Iran in 2011 to visit his grandmother. During his visit, Iranian authorities accused him of working for the CIA and arrested him on espionage charges. Iran's Revolutionary Court sentenced Hekmati to death in January 2012, but an appeals court overturned the sentence two months later.

The new conviction may signal that Iran is willing to negotiate Hekmati's early release if the U.S. releases some Iranian prisoners, the lawyer told the newspaper.

On Thursday, State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said a U.S. delegation discussed the status of missing Americans, including Hekmati, Christian Pastor Saeed Abedini, and retired FBI agent Robert Levinson, at a meeting in Vienna with Iranian officials.

"All three should be home with their families, and that is consistently raised by us with any Iranian official when we engage," Secretary of State John Kerry told the Senate in testimony on Tuesday.

Rep. Dan Kildee, D-Mich., who represents the district where Hekmati's family lives, has appealed to the Iranians to release Hekmati on humanitarian grounds. Hekmati's father, a community college professor, has been diagnosed with brain cancer and was hospitalized in March after a stroke.

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